The Trouble With Hypotheticals

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• Anonymous, is there a difference between "morally reprehensible" and "sick"? If you look at the quotation, you'll see he says it would be "an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do." Both you and he agree that the argument is a bad one.

  Bennett was talking about an idea brought up in the book Freakonomics. Have you read that book? I have, and the authors there actually talk about abortion in general, not about abortion of any one race. It's an uncomfortable, disturbing argument -- the idea that legalized abortion removed a high proportion of children who would otherwise have grown up in families that were at risk for committing crimes. They would have been at risk because of their poverty, not because of their race, but since black families are more likely to be poor, fewer children from black families means fewer children from poor families, which means fewer people living in crime-invested areas, which means crime goes down. Of course, if you abort white children, or all children of all races, then you'll also see a drop in crime. Is that a sensible crime-prevention action? No, the authors of Freakonomics point out that for every potential criminal you're aborting, you're also aborting a high percentage of potential law-abiding citizens, and that the cost to society at large is too great. But it's an observed, documented trend, that about 18 or 20 years after legalized abortion, there's a drop in the population of 18-20 year-olds, and since that's the group that's most likely to commit violent crimes, society sees a drop in those crimes.

  Bennett was not "joking" about killing anybody. He wasn't advocating it -- he was giving an if-then statement.

  I can say "If the moon were made of green cheese, NASA would have to design this kind of a spacesuit in order to let astronauts eat the cheese on the moon." You may disagree with my desire to spend time discussing hypothetical spacesuit design, or you may disagree with my conclusion that space travel is complex enough without designing a spacesuit that lets astronauts eat objects they find on the moon. But if you do want to disagree with me, don't attack me by saying that I believe the moon is made of green cheese, or that I *wish* the moon were made of green cheese, or that I secretly think everyone should eat nothing but green cheese, or that I think that people who don't eat green cheese deserve death, etc., etc.. etc.

  If you want to dislike Bennett or his political views, be my guest, but demonstrate your intelligence by talking about the things he actually advocates and believes, not attacking him for making a hypothetical statement that he himself calls "impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible."

• Will, yes, that's part of the basic argument, though the economist whose research is presented in Freakonomics (it's co-authored with a journalist) notes that circumstances aren't the only factor. Extending beyond the argument made in Freakonomics, the baby of a woman whose pregnancy is troubled just *might* grow up to be a serial murderer, but might also grow up to be a doctor who cures cancer, a lawyer who attacks a particular injustice, or simply an ordinary citizen who pays taxes and raises a family like everyone else. The pro-life position argues that unborn life is precious regardless of society's opinion of the value of that life, regardless of soceity's opinion of whether it IS a life, and regardless of the cost to society of the resources necessary to support the adult that will potentially result from a given conception. That's part of the same argument that opposes the death penalty, in that the human dignity even of serial murderers is worth preserving, that killing a murderer doesn't unmurder the victims.

  Of course, plenty of pro-life people are also pro-capital punishment, and plenty of people who have marched to save the life of a convicted killer or in support of the rights of animals have also marched in support of legalized abortion. All that hinges on the various values that the differing parties place on a fetus, a convicted murderer, and a fetus who might grow up to be a murderer.

  The book itself doesn't take a stand on how its statistics SHOULD be used, but the economist does insert, in a coda near the end, the opinion that the cost to society of aborting all the potential criminals would make it an inefficient policy. In general, the book discusses the unexpected, hard-to-comprehend connections between different sets of data, and how a close analysis of statistics can lead to insights on human behavior that would otherwise be blocked by our natural squamishness or emotional reactions when the issue comes up.

  And, as this thread demonstrates, race, gender and abortion are definitely among those issues.

• No good person sits around hypothetically thinking about killing a whole race of babies without being a sick cookie. there are alot of sick americans who agree, with genocidal fantastasies. They used to lynch blacks, & have the kids playing around the hanging body. Its an American pastime I guess. Some of you are Going to hell in a hand basket. If Martin Luther King had said "the world would be better if all white children where killed, but that would be unreprehensible & we would never do that". He was killed for wanting to make peace, so no talk of killing would have gotten him anywhere but dead faster. But white people are patting this fascist punk on the back for making statements that black children all should die, bringing down the crime rate. That is sick . Maybe some of you are sick too. Not a very Christian country, the USA. "They are joking about killing black babies, after all the abuse they put on those blacks the last 500 years, now the politictians are back at that again?"